NVIDIA launched two budget Kepler-based graphics cards today, and the sub-$250 GPUs are competitively priced. The GTX 650 is a card with an MSRP of $109 and is matched against the Radeon 7750 (which retails for around $110 depending on manufacturer). Further, the $229 GTX 660 is pitted against the Radeon 7850 – an approximately $220 card (some manufacturers beat that price, others are priced higher).

The AMD Radeon HD 7850 Graphics Card from our review.

And while you can find these AMD graphics cards for slightly less than the NVIDIA competition, the green team GPU is a faster card in most games (especially at 1080p). In an attempt to sway gamers towards the AMD choice, the company is preparing to cut prices on the entire 7000-series line – including the 7750 and 7850. These are cuts on the, erm, arleady-cut prices announced last month.

The Price cuts are as follows:

AMD Radeon HD GPU

New Slashed Prices

7970 GHz Edition

$430

7970

$410

7950 Boost Edition

$300

7950

$290

7870

$240

7850

$200

7770

$110

7750

$95

These prices are almost certainly for reference designs, and you can naturally expect to pay for any factory overclocked model. What these price cuts mean, though is that the base versions are now cheaper to get ahold of, which is a good thing (for gamers, not so much for AMD heh).

When specifically talking about the price cuts as a response to budget Kepler cards, both the 7750 and 7850 can be had for anywhere between $5 and $20 cheaper in general. That’s is ~$20 extra dollars that you could devote to more RAM or put you over the edge into getting a better quality PSU. It definitely makes the decision to go AMD or NVIDIA a bit more difficult (but in an exciting/good way).

This is not the first time that AMD has slashed prices on its 7000 series graphics cards and now that it has competition on all fronts, it will be interesting to see how all the prices finally shake out to be. Interestingly, Softpedia seems to have posted the price cut information on Tuesday (two days before Kepler) but states that the cuts will not go into effect until next week – though Newegg seems to have taken some initiative of its own by pricing certain cards at the new prices already. This may have technically been more of a pre-emptive move than a reactionary one, but either way the budget gaming section of the market just got exciting again!

I have a similar line of thinking on this, AMD didn't have competition from NV's latest architecture so it was able to price its cards higher. Once NV started moving into that space as well, AMD adjusted it's prices down to be competitive.

so far AMD already dropping their radeon price for several times but nvidia still not responding to this price war from AMD. are they (nvidia) can't afford to do the same or they were confident with their product that they see they will be fine with their current pricing?

Once the initial investment costs are covered the company can afford to lower the prices. Consumers like to buy more stuff than they need and both camps end up satisfied. nVidia has cultivated superior relationsips with software developers so i think investing in their HW costs a bit more but not in vain.